The en­tire world must sure­ly have felt re­lieved by the de­ci­sion of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to hold off on his threat to bomb Iran in­to a pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry.

It is, of course, ar­guable whether his stat­ed in­ten­tion amount­ed to a bluff aimed at forc­ing the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment to come to an agree­ment or face the re­al­i­ty of Amer­i­ca’s dead­ly and de­struc­tive fire­pow­er.

Or in­deed, he may have de­cid­ed to step back from car­ry­ing out a promised ac­tion which could not on­ly have ric­o­cheted but al­so proved de­struc­tive to the US in the long run in mul­ti­ple ways, in­clud­ing dam­ag­ing its rep­u­ta­tion as a rea­son­able force in the ex­er­cise of its enor­mous mil­i­tary pow­er?

On the oth­er side of the cease­fire, the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment has, in the­o­ry, saved the coun­try from the promised on­slaught of ma­jor bomb­ing.

And even if it were pos­si­ble that Iran could have de­liv­ered a few dev­as­tat­ing blows to US in­stal­la­tions in the re­gion, and mount­ed heavy at­tacks on Is­rael, those achieve­ments would be mi­nor com­pared to the scale of de­struc­tion to the coun­try and the loss of life that had been threat­ened.

One view is that Pres­i­dent Trump’s de­ci­sion rep­re­sents a re­al­i­sa­tion that he was los­ing the bluff­ing game and there­fore had to with­draw and seek a more rea­son­able so­lu­tion to end the war - one that would re­open the Strait of Hor­muz to al­low oil to flow and pre­vent fur­ther dam­age to the glob­al econ­o­my, in­clud­ing the in­evitable surge in oil prices be­yond the US$100 per bar­rel mark.

From here on, much will de­pend on the el­e­ments of the peace plans pro­posed by both the US and Iran.

It can be ex­pect­ed that there will be ex­treme open­ing po­si­tions pre­sent­ed to the Pak­istani peace­mak­ers, who must be com­mend­ed for bring­ing the two sides to the ta­ble.

Among the pro­pos­als re­port­ed so far are Iran’s de­sire for a per­ma­nent cease­fire - ef­fec­tive­ly an end to the war against it by the US and Is­rael - and for those coun­tries to fund at least a por­tion of the re­build­ing that will be re­quired.

From the US per­spec­tive, the im­me­di­ate re­quire­ment is for Iran to re­open the Strait to all ship­ping and, in­evitably, to aban­don all at­tempts to de­vel­op nu­clear weapons.

“We re­ceived a 10-point pro­pos­al from Iran, and be­lieve it is a work­able ba­sis on which to ne­go­ti­ate,” Pres­i­dent Trump has been quot­ed as say­ing.

This is a very en­cour­ag­ing state­ment, in­di­cat­ing his will­ing­ness to end the war, hav­ing al­ready said the US has achieved much of its ob­jec­tives.

One very wor­ry­ing fea­ture of any plan for long-last­ing peace must sure­ly be whether Is­rael will be will­ing to ac­cept an agree­ment with Iran still stand­ing in rel­a­tive­ly strong con­di­tion, notwith­stand­ing the loss of lead­ers and se­ri­ous blows to its in­fra­struc­ture.

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu is of­ten crit­i­cised for sign­ing peace agree­ments while con­tin­u­ing mil­i­tary en­gage­ments.

Al­ready, he has made it clear that the peace does not ex­tend to his army’s con­tin­ued bomb­ing of Lebanon. Is he al­so will­ing to re­lin­quish Lebanese lands seized by his forces as a so-called buffer zone, re­port­ed­ly for Is­rael’s pro­tec­tion?

Pres­i­dent Trump will ul­ti­mate­ly be re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing the Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter’s com­pli­ance.